Clara Who: The Adventures of the Impossible Girl and the Immortal Girl
by queercapwriting
Summary: What happens when Clara and Lady Me/Ashildr decide to take the long way around together? A loosely connected series of one-shots about the space girlfriends' adventures. Clashildr, femslash.
1. Chapter 1

Clara hasn't asked yet, but she'd be lying if she said she hasn't been wondering.

And judging by the hard set of Lady Me's jaw and the calloused look in her eyes, Clara knows that Me has wondered, too. That Me has tried, probably more than once in the last few billion years, to find out.

What happens if someone strikes a fatal blow too quickly for the Mire medical chip to heal her?

She gets a fleeting image of blood staining the other woman's delicate temple, and she knows she doesn't want to find out.

Not like this, anyway.

Not chained next to each other, newly minted sonic pen on the operating-tray-turned-weapons-storage across the room, forced to kneel on the cold, eerily sterile steel floor of a laboratory on their fourteenth alien planet together. (Not that she'd been keeping count.)

"You know," Me intones calmly, conversationally, and Clara can't tell if she's addressing her or their three white-robed captors, each casually preparing scalpels. A fourth conspirator, whom Clara is distinctly not looking at, is giving a surgical saw an experimental buzz.

"If you want to find out the secrets of human biology, there really are more _pleasant_ ways to go about it."

She turns her face toward Clara suddenly, her expression wiped clear and innocent, but her eyes are piercing with the dance of a heady challenge. The bottom drops out of Clara's stomach, and her tongue flits across her lower lip as her eyes flick down to Me's mouth. The surgical torture chamber melts away as other, infinitely more enticing, thoughts and images flood her mind.

But then the corner of Me's lips twitch into the ghost of a wicked grin and she's clearing her throat meaningfully.

 _Right. A plan, not a come on. Right._

Clara clears her own throat before nodding, hoping she doesn't look as dazed as she feels.

"She's right, you know." Me widens her eyes slightly and nods encouragingly as Clara pauses. "There's more to studying our biology than our anatomy, ey?" But their captors still aren't looking their way.

"In fact," she says as she stands slowly, catching Me's eyes. The immortal girl furrows her brow for a moment before realizing Clara's plan and nodding curtly, taking care to hide her smile.

Clara's chains clank as she gets to her feet, and only then do their captors turn – or rather, rotate – their way. "If you want to know the first thing about humans, it's that there's really no need to chain women's hands in front of our bodies instead of behind our backs. It really makes it so much easier to do _this_."

Without warning, Clara plunges her hand into the inside pocket of Me's trench coat – well, _her_ trench coat, really, but Me was completely drenched and shaking when they came out of that crystal lake on Archemius Prime yesterday and all her trying not to shiver just made her shivering worse. Me'd looked so good in it – so warm and safe, and yes, more than a little sexy – that Clara had insisted she keep it on. (At least for now.)

And she's glad she did.

Her wrist grazes soft flesh and both of their faces flush deeply as Clara's fingers search in her – Me's – whatever – pocket for – _where the bloody hell is – no, not River's latest novel – not Me's journal – damnit – yes!_ A tiny, mint-sized (and flavored) piece of metal, disguised as an internal coat fastener.

Her eyes catch Me's, which are wide with… something Clara can't focus on just now. She winks at the woman whose hitched breath is hot on her face, hoping she looks as suave as she feels. And before their captors can grab their discarded guns from the same table the sonic is laying on, Clara seals her fingers around the metal and presses.

A moment of locked eye contact, silence, the prayer of _Please let this work. It'll look awfully silly otherwise_. And then the sonic pen they'd made together is whizzing across the room, right into Clara's now readied hands. In a flash, she's undone Me's chains, and had her's unclasped in a quick pass of the sonic from woman to woman.

"How'd you do that? Isn't that cheating?" Me asks the question that their captors, fumbling to point their guns at them, also undoubtedly have.

"Remember a couple nights ago I couldn't sleep? I figured what the hell, let's make a virtually undetectable homing beacon for the sonic for situations that, funnily enough, looked just like this one when they played out in my head."

They're standing shoulder to shoulder now, Me holding out the sonic, straight armed, facing the guns.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Must have forgot somewhere between the horde of hungry travelers thinking we _actually_ own a diner and our little dip in their famed waters." A pause. "Wait, you didn't know, so why were you – "

Me shrugs, her eyes fixed on the barrels of the guns. "I thought you'd just talk our way out of it, that always seems to work."

Clara glances at her sideways and grins. "Yeah, well, so does this."

"When you're quite finished," the formerly saw-handling interrogator interjects.

Clara pulls her sternest teacher face and voice. "Not quite yet, no, you'll have to wait." She pauses, tilts her head, and purses her lips at Me, who returns the look. Clara nods, then turns back to their would-be dissector, and says, "Alright, we're finished now. What would you like?"

He renews his grip on his gun purposefully and gestures for his fellows to close in on them.

"Funny thing for me not to mention," Clara begins again conversationally. Me smirks and silently flicks a hidden switch on the bottom of their pen.

"If we have a homing beacon for our sonic, do you really think we wouldn't have one for our TARDIS?"

The first two bars of Pretty Woman starts to wheeze throughout the laboratory in typical TARDIS tones as the diner materializes around them.

Their former captors yell and open fire. Clara and Me just smile and wiggle their fingers casually.

"Bye," they singsong in union before breaking into conspiratorial giggles.

Clara loses her breath – as she's been prone to doing since she decided to take the long way round – and somehow her hands, still shaking with mirth, find their way to Me's shoulders for stability. Me's hands, in turn, find Clara's waistline. They stay that way even after their giggles fade to long, settling breaths.

"I'm sorry I forgot to tell you about the homing beacon," Clara says, because if they're talking, they can ignore where their hands are; they can stay where they are.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a better plan than 'Clara will talk them down from dissecting us.'" Me's voice is low, almost sultry.

Clara almost chokes, then scoffs softly. "We all have our days. Last week with the Slitheen, I was the one who was too thick to take advantage of that bloody unzipping process to get away."

Me arches her eyebrows and layers her voice with all the authority that granted her the status of Lady. "Are you calling me thick?"

Clara's eyes bug out and she almost moves her hands, but she thinks she feels a little subtle, added pressure from Me on her waist, so she stays.

"No! No, I didn't mean –"

Me chuckles and this time, definitely presses her hands into Clara's waist. "I'm several billion years old, Clara, I don't misinterpret self-deprecating humor that easily."

There's a pause, a meeting of mock-glaring eyes, then another round of dissolving into giggles. Without knowing who shifted what first, somehow they've both inched even closer into each other, so that their breath is tangled in the tiny space between them and Clara can smell the Galeron tea they'd been sharing before they'd been informed – by the barrel of a gun – that off-worlders were subject to mandatory dissection.

She inhales, but she's not sure if any of it is oxygen. Her eyes drift helplessly down to Me's lips. Again.

"Me, I – "

Both women slam against the console as the TARDIS lurches, suddenly, and parts of the other side of the console spark.

Automatically falling into the rhythm they'd organically established, Me swings herself over to the display monitor and Clara goes about soothing the controls.

"Shhh, just tell us what's wrong, girl," Clara says aloud as her fingers fly across the knobs and swirly buttons. " _Terrible timing there, we'll have to talk about that,"_ she adds under her breath.

Me's breath hitches and her eyes swivel uncertainly from Clara's face back to the monitor.

"Clara," she calls tentatively, bracing herself with both hands as another shockwave rocks the diner. "Are we where I think we are?"

Clara stumbles over to her as another shudder runs through the console room, and Me's arms catch around her waist again. Clara glances up, where she always imagines the TARDIS's metaphorical eyes to be, and sucks her teeth, both pleased and frustrated, at the young model's mischief.

Not bothering to move away from the warmth of Me's body, Clara stares at what Me was talking about. She blinks.

They hadn't been to Earth together since right after America, since Me waited patiently in the console room while Clara said her goodbyes to the Doctor; since they ran away together.

It seems their TARDIS decided it's time for them to return.


	2. Chapter 2

_I decided to give everyone's favorite space girlfriends a mostly invasion-free excursion, both in honor of the fact that really, they both need a break, and also, in honor of the dwindling summer and days spent at Coney Island._

 _Reviews, follows, and favs are powerful manifestations of love. Follow on here and over at queergirlwriting dot tumblr dot com  
_

* * *

"Clara."

Me's voice is tentative, soft. Full of warning, full of the unspoken promise she'd made to Clara the moment the girl said she wanted to take the long way around.

The unspoken promise to never discuss the way that Clara only breathed out of habit; the way that when they touched, Me could never feel a pulse under her soft skin.

But she's thinking she might have to break that promise, now, as Clara is standing stock-still, eyes fixed on the TARDIS's view screen.

"Clara," she says again, even softer this time. She's still in her arms, still exactly where she was when she stumbled across the console room as it shuddered its landing, held up by Ashildr's ancient and so, so young hands.

"Clara, are we where I think we are?" She repeats the question gently, knowing Clara's strength but also knowing, full well, that she'd been avoiding Earth just like she'd been avoiding references to… him.

The man who tried to be a god, for her, who spent half the lifetime of the universe breaking through solid walls with his bare fist, over, and over, and over, and over. To save her, even when she was already dead.

And now he couldn't even recognize her face.

It was the torturing himself part, Me knows, somehow, that is destroying Clara the most. That she's running hardest from. That she may never stop running from, because if she does…

Because if she does, then it will be that - that - that breaks her.

But now the TARDIS has brought them back to Earth, and she's not sure which part of Clara will win: the part that surrendered to death with as much dignity than Me had ever seen or the part that couldn't bear to do the same thing twice.

Suddenly his impossible girl is slipping effortlessly out of her arms - Me's fingers keen at the loss - and turns to her with a manic, decidedly him-esque grin on her face.

"Earth, 2004. New York bleeding City." She tosses out her arms and all but skips down the stairs they'd slipped into the side of the console room, toward their wardrobe that seemed to be expanding by the day, of its own accord.

"It's summer, Me! Better pick something hot!"

Me cocks an eyebrow suggestively and purses her lips slightly, silently, as she watches the other girl's lithe figure disappear into the depths of their TARDIS.

She puts a resigned hand on the console, shaking her head. "Why'd you have to go and do that, then? Bring her back to Earth? Or me, for that matter."

The TARDIS just wheezes softly in response, and Me sighs.

"Something hot, huh?" A smirk tugs at the corners of her lips. "I can do that."

* * *

Me had lived through so much of the history of the universe. While the Doctor had tortured himself to get to Clara in his confession dial, she had been living, living, living, not the same moments over and over, but through the evolution of life on Earth, through British and American imperialism and, later, that of the Great and Bountiful Human Empire.

As she'd watched the universe burn before her, she'd thought she'd seen it all.

But she'd never beheld anything like the sight in front of her, now.

Because Clara has somehow convinced the TARDIS to flatten their stairs into a ramp, and she's rumbled into the console room, revving the engine of a sleek black Triumph, clad in a fake leather jacket despite her warning to Me that they've landed in the dead of summer.

Though her face is obscured by her helmet, Me's been around the universe enough - and studied Clara Oswald enough - to know that Clara's fixing her with an attractively cocky grin, and quite possibly licking her lips.

Me's heart skips several beats before she realizes that Clara's loose, confident lean on her motorbike has tightened, that her body's gone stiff.

Me panics for a moment before realizing staring through Clara's helmet into her eyes; and realizes that she is the cause for Clara's freeze.

Because - though Clara's emergence from the depths of the TARDIS had made her forget for a moment - Me had taken Clara's advice to dress "hot" to heart.

Certainly, it was normally beneath Me to wear such form fitting, casual clothing; but a quick check of her journals from 2004 reminded her that she'd been (very, very secretly) taken by the women's fashion of the time. Mainly because it was, well… really something to look at.

So she finally decided she'd try it out, and the TARDIS had nudged her toward a sleek black halter top that rode down into the crevice between her breasts and stopped a little below her navel, along with a pair of simple denim shorts that clung close to her body down to the middle of her thighs.

Complete with a pair of aviators.

Which Me lowers, now, looking at Clara uncertainly over the rims.

"Did I… I meant to blend in… was I unsuccessful?"

A heat that feels uncomfortably like shame floods Me's stomach, and it takes all her confidence - and all her trust in Clara, which dates back to before she was immortal and has been, all along, so deeply entwined with her own confidence - to not retreat back into the wardrobe room, away from the intensity of Clara's gaze.

Off comes Clara's helmet, and she's vehemently shaking her head. She clears her throat.

"No, no, not at all! I mean… no, you weren't unsuccessful. Me, you…" She pauses and both women smirk slightly. Clara regroups herself, dragging her eyes once again up and down Me's body. "I said hot. You… you accomplished hot."

Confidence fully returned, and the unpleasant heat of shame rapidly being replaced by a very different kind of heat, Me slips her shades back on and smirks, arching an eyebrow as she does so.

"Am I going to walk while you leave me in the dust?"

It's Clara's turn to smirk, and she reaches behind her for a second helmet, matching hers. She holds it out between them like a challenge.

"Unless you're scared."

"Clara, I've lived - "

"Yes, I know, so much of the universe's life, you're not scared of anything, fair enough, now hop on. I've got a craving for chips."

* * *

The speed is intoxicating to Me - as is the closeness of Clara, the way her jacket clings to the exposed skin on Me's chest - but she's not sure how her body knows how to lean into each curve in perfect sync with this woman. If she's ridden a motorbike before - and she thinks she must have, statistically - she certainly doesn't remember it.

But her body is perfectly melded with Clara's as the once older, now younger, woman speeds through the streets of New York City, past throngs of hardly clothed, sun-reddened teenagers, an elderly interracial couple holding hands, and a father laughing while swinging his child up onto his bare, brown shoulders.

How Clara knows which turns to take and where the best spot to park her motorbike is, Me doesn't ask. Because Clara probably wouldn't say. It undoubtedly has to do with him.

"Coney Island," Clara had called back to her as the wind whipped between them, as her only explanation of where they are.

But more quickly than Me would have liked - because cloudless as the sky and hot as the sun is, Me had relished the closeness riding the bike with Clara necessitated - they've ventured onto a wide, long boardwalk, Clara earning strange looks and offering a death glare in exchange when she enthusiastically orders chips and slathers them in ketchup.

She slips off her jacket to reveal a sleeveless, flower-embossed summer dress, and slings the jacket casually over her shoulder. Clara's hips move softly to the various songs blasting from joggers to crowds of teenagers as she bends to drink from a fountain next to a set of bathrooms and hoses, around which bemused but exhausted mothers are trying in vain to convince their children to stay still long enough to have the sand washed off their writhing, laughing brown bodies.

A group of older men crowd around a bench, on the beach side of the boardwalk, listening to a radio blasting music in Spanish. Me raises an eyebrow when she notices Clara's lips mouthing along without the TARDIS translation matrix. One of the men notices, too, Clara's singing, and he calls out to her loudly. Me stiffens and her eyes shift behind her aviators to Clara, but the woman just laughs and puts her hands up as she dances toward him in acknowledgement, half sexily, half dorkily.

"Your friend, she doesn't dance?" the man calls, and Clara laughs gently.

"We're working on it!" she laughs, and takes Me's hand as she waves at the men and strides away.

The men whoop as they take in their connected hands, and Clara just shakes her head with a small smile on her face. Me glances down at their interlinked fingers and is awash with amazement at how natural it feels.

Clara stops for a moment to stare up at a towering roller coaster, the screams of its riders reaching the beach itself as the car nears the top of a nearly 90 degree drop. Clara shudders involuntarily.

"Not a roller coaster person?"

"That's our lives, right there," Clara gestures at the roller coaster, still holding Me's hand. "Up, down, total drop, upside down, whatever. I don't need to go on a rickety old amusement park ride to feel that rush."

But her lips are curved into a smile, so Me tugs her along, toward a set of wooden stairs leading off the boardwalk toward the amusement park. She doesn't see the way Clara's eyes rake down her body, the way she licks her now salty lips as she takes in the atypical - for Me - outfit.

They never get to the roller coaster, though, because the moment Clara sees a track full of go-karts zipping frantically past each other, she's in.

Me sighs, fully anticipating the tension that will inevitably fill the TARDIS when they get back.

Because they're both extremely competitive.

And only one person wins at go-karts.

* * *

To prove her seriousness - as if Me would ever dare question it - Clara slips her jacket back on, despite the heat, as she bounces from one foot to another while they wait on line to buy the tickets. Me doesn't comment, but she is forcibly reminded of the Doctor who he's forced to wait for… anything.

There's screaming and there's trash talking, all from Clara's cherry red car. Me just purses her lips and drives, calculating the exact angles and velocities needed to successfully pass the eleven year old in front of her, whose trailing behind Clara, driving masterfully in the middle of the road. If Clara had noticed the way her tongue escapes from between her lips in concentration, she might have crashed along one of the tighter curves into the black bumper that line the track.

But she doesn't notice, because she's too focused on passing one car, the next, all the while making sure Me can't pass her.

No calculations, no physics and math for Clara, just pure adrenaline. Pure adrenaline and a sense of wonderment that the steely, I-will-defeat-you look in Me's eyes can enliven all of her senses, can make her body as keenly alert, as it is when she is running for her life, when the planet below is about to explode.

Maybe, just maybe, she and the Doctor should have tried…

Her car swerves unpleasantly and she nicks the bumper of the car vying for position next to her.

"No bumping, this is not bumper cars," one of the teenage attendants chides her over a PA system, sounding halfway bored and halfway amused. She squints and accelerates, leaving the mother-son team in the car near hers far behind.

She refocuses on the task at hand, on winning the race, on beating Me, on beating everyone. She has no idea how many laps are left, but she treats it like it's her last.

For someone without a pulse, she sure can feel her heart pounding.

And then it's her and it's me, coming around the last curve as ride attendants have directed all the cars back into the three narrow starting lanes. She's going to reach the middle one before Me can reach the left one, she's going to win, and both of them have utterly lapped everyone else. She lets out a victorious whoop, and then…

A strong vibration throbs near her chest, and she thinks for a moment it's the car, or her excitement, but quickly realizes it's neither.

Me takes advantage of her momentary distraction and slips into the starting lane before her, letting out a victorious laugh before triumphant eyes turn concerned as she looks back at Clara, her eyes wide and the swell of her cleavage glistening with a soft sheen of sweat.

Clara pulls her car along next to her, slamming a little too hard into the already parked car in front of her.

Wordlessly, the women slip out of their seat belts and shift to stand together, Clara's hand pulling back her jacket to reveal the source of the vibration: their new sonic, telling them - rather insistently - that the TARDIS is in distress.

They barely even have to exchange a glance before they shift, as one, to sprint back down the boardwalk.

Neither of them stop to wonder when they started running with their fingers interlaced.


	3. Chapter 3

"Ashi - Me?" Clara winces internally. She's still not quite sure how long she and Me have been traveling together, not exactly, but they've spent maybe a dozen nights - days - stretches of time - on the TARDIS and about a dozen more on various planets.

So, it's at least a month and a half since she and Me reunited and promptly ran away together.

But this - the night after Brooklyn, after go kart racing and Clara's non-existent pulse slamming at the wonder Me took in the boardwalk, the way their fingers laced together when they dashed back to the TARDIS (who, it turns out, needed fuel) - is only the second night that Me has has let Clara into the library, her library, while she meticulously records the events of however long has passed since last time she sat down to write.

She wonders what Me is writing about Coney Island, if she's found it worthy of remembering at all.

She wonders, but even the wondering feels invasive; she's only just been allowed to bear witness to Me's intimate ritual, her intimate burden, and she doesn't want to muck it up by getting her name wrong.

Again.

The Lady Me gives no indication that she's heard a thing, though, her small hands still diligently looping a ball point pen across the innards of yet another innately-bound diary.

Clara clears her throat, unaccustomed to feeling so tiny, enveloped inside a magnificent, Beauty-and-the-Beast-style library; each volume full of Me's slanted scrawl. Each volume full of… her.

"Me?" She tries again, louder this time.

"Mm," Me hums without looking up, and Clara smiles in recognition of the complex sentence the sound contains:

 _I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, I just need to finish this thought or I'll lose it and be exceedingly irritated with you, just hold on a tick and you'll have my attention, but for the sake of all that is good, be patient and don't assume I've forgotten you; this is quite an important thought and it'll take time to get down, but as I said, I heard you and I'll be with you shortly._

She knows all the details of that one little sound because she used to make it herself almost daily when she was commenting on student papers. She sighs noiselessly as her heart twists in her chest and she wonders, not for the first time, if they're alright. Courtney in particular. She'd taken Danny's death harder than the rest, and…

"Clara, you're crying!"

She jumps at the alarm in Me's voice and swipes and her traitorous eyes roughly.

"What, sorry, no, I'm not," she stumbles quickly, looking up at Me - who's rapidly shifted from her table in front of the fire to Clara's deep-seated armchair - with a practiced mask of mild innocence.

Me gives her a look somewhere between extreme consternation and affection, but she doesn't press the matter. She never does.

"What did you want, Clara?" Me asks gently, but not gently enough to make Clara bristle defensively. Clara licks her lips at the sound of her name on Me's tongue, at the way the fireplace brings out the rich depths in her eyes.

"What?"

"You said my name while I was writing."

"Mm." Clara slams the brakes on her brain and looks back up at the older woman.

"I was just… how can you tell when you're… when you're home?"

She'd expected Me to get quiet, thoughtful. Maybe even to refuse to answer the question, maybe give her a TARDIS-load of snark.

She hadn't expected her to collapse into the chair next to her, curl her knees up to her chest, and answer without hesitation.

"I'm home right now."

Clara blinks and Me licks her bottom lip while glancing at Clara.

"Wherever my books are."

Clara fights the surge of disappointment that floods through her at that clarification, because she refuses to be jealous of books.

Me arches an eyebrow and explains on. "You know the story. Infinite life, limited memory. These books… these books are like an extension of my body." She cocks her head thoughtfully, her eyes far away and yet so, so focused on Clara's face.

"I know they have all varieties of augmentation, of chips to extend what your brain can retain; some even have the option to turn off certain knowledge when you're not using it. But I…" She shrugs, and the fire pops. "I'd been writing for so many hundreds of years by the time…"

She pauses and squints at the girl beside her.

"Home is my body, and my immortal extensions of it. Not the answer you were looking for, was it?"

Clara is reminded, unbidden, of Madame Vastra's one word test - which Jenny tells her she's passed in more than one lifetime - and considers, harshly, what it would be like to only remember that because it's written somewhere in her handwriting.

"No."

Me nods, taking a long, slow breath, her eyes never leaving Clara's.

"I watched every place I've lived, every place I've ever seen, burn at the ends of the universe." She pauses and considers Clara carefully before proceeding.

"Then, I suppose, I did feel I needed a home. But when… when I was brought back…"

She chooses the passive voice carefully to avoid mentioning the Doctor, and when Clara's eyes flash but she otherwise doesn't react, Me proceeds.

"... It feels different now. Like… Well, more like what I imagine you might be feeling right now. Like I need to plant my proverbial flag somewhere, call something…"

She raises her eyes carefully.

"...Some _one_ … home, now, while I can, or else I'll never have it again…"

"So you think you can do that then?" Clara asks clearly, in what Me is slowly coming to recognize as her teacher voice. Her coping voice. Her safety voice. "That you can just call something, someone, home, and then it is? They are?"

"Don't you?" Me asks mildly, and Clara is forcibly reminded of Danny's arms, of Jane's kiss, of _his_ kisses to her forehead and his gruff voice and intense eyes.

Of a Viking village where she said she'd fight for her and a console room resonating with the hum of the time vortex and the tuning of an electric guitar.

Of a leaf and a picture book and a promise.

"Yeah," she says slowly, not sure when her fingertips started tracing the tender inside of Me's forearm. "I suppose I do."


End file.
